Health care providers should be culturally competent in the health care setting

Health Care providers of the United States are going to inevitably encounter people of all walks of life and cultures. It is essential that they know their market which will consist of various religious practices concerning health that could effect an individuals policy, especially those policies concerning autopsies and surgeries, such as blood transfusions, and other procedures which are refused by some cultures. To know your consumer is a basic mantra in business and it should be applied in a health care provider.

They serve a variety of people.

Yes, health care providers should be culturally competent in the health care setting, because they have to be able to serve the needs of a variety of people. A health care provider needs to look at a cultural context in order to be able to understand things that the patient might be doing.

Doctors need cultural competencies

Doctors aren't simply technicians who work on inanimate bodies, like auto mechanics who can simply look under the hood, fix some tubes, and never do anything else. A doctor deals with human beings, who have hopes fears and emotions that themselves have an effect on their ability to get better.

Yes They Should

I believe health care providers should be culturally competent in the health care setting. Culturally competence simply means the ability to interact with people of different cultures and people from different socio-economic backgrounds. As a person in poverty I was very much offended by a doctor who harassed me because I didn't want to pay for blood tests when I had just had them the month before. As a cash payer it made me extremely upset that the provider was not culturally competent in regards to our different socio-economic backgrounds. I've never been rich, never will be, and I don't care to be rich, but at the same time, that means I don't waste my money.